William Godvin Harris was born 20 April 1936, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He died 22 December 1991. Harris played clarinet and alto saxophone in his teens, but switched to drums while in the army. He received encouragement from Max Roach, moving to New York at the end of his national service in 1963, where he worked with Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt, Dexter Gordon, Clifford Jordan, Clark Terry, Joe Henderson and Freddie Hubbard among others.



By 1966 he was involved with the avant garde movement, joining Archie Shepp and then working with Albert Ayler in Europe.



He participated in drum clinics with Roach and Kenny Clarke.



At the end of the decade he formed a co-operative band, the 360 Degree Experience, with Roswell Rudd, Marion Brown and Grachan Moncur III. In 1970 he played with Shepp for productions of plays by LeRoi Jones and Aishah Rahman. He has since done studio work with Maxine Brown and Doc Cheatham and played with Pharoah Sanders, Steve Lacy, Gato Barbieri, Sheila Jordan, Vincent Herring and the Jazz Composers’ Orchestra. In 1985 he toured Europe with the French Horn Connection and in a quartet with Gijs Hendricks.



Not as radical as Sunny Murray or Milford Graves, he was nevertheless an important occupant of the drum chair in '60s New Thing groups.